SYKE continues its growth spurt with CSO appointment for Lewis Bretts

Legal engineering company SYKE has appointed Lewis Bretts to the role of chief strategy officer (CSO). Formerly a practising commercial barrister, Bretts has been consulting for SYKE since January 2019. In addition to overseeing several key customer relationships, he will now also help develop the business and provide strategic direction.

At the Commercial Bar Bretts specialised in information and technology. He was appointed to Attorney General’s panel of counsel in 2018 and acted for central government, large corporates and major retailers.

In an announcement out today (19 November) he said: “We are in the middle of a legal services revolution and it’s great to be leading change for lawyers and businesses who find themselves thinking ‘there has to be a better way.

“As legal technology matures, it’s crucial that new systems and processes are implemented in a sustainable way; as the pre-eminent legal engineering consultancy SYKE is well placed to support and deliver that strategic thinking.”

Bretts’ appointment to the CSO role at a time of considerable growth and expansion for SYKE. Last month the company announced the appointments of John Buxton and Dom Burch to the roles of business development director and marketing director. Both Buxton and Burch worked alongside SYKE’s founder and CEO Alistair Maiden at Asda, the Walmart owned UK retailer, before Maiden left to set up SYKE in 2016.

Bretts joins a senior team at SYKE that includes Ben Murphy (senior legal engineer) who joined from Sky Bet in October, and Adam Dessurne who was appointed as head of enterprise CLM practice in September. Adam was previously head of CLM at 4C where he grew a team specialising in contract lifecycle management.

Maiden said: “Our collective mission is to transform the global legal industry by embedding the latest innovative technology, be that document automation or more sophisticated AI to dynamically create new contracts. By removing unnecessary tasks and reducing bureaucracy, we are able to save companies money and free lawyers up to do what they do best – practice law.”